This Day in History

January 15, 1986

The National Science Foundation Opens the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA).

The National Science Foundation opens the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois, a national “Center of excellence” for research into high-performance computing. Its most famous alumnus, Marc Andreessen, invented his Mosaic browser for the network known as the World Wide Web while a student there, an effort he later transformed into the Netscape browser company.